E-P2 High Speed Water Drops w/ 14-150mm

Since the hummingbirds are now gone I decided to experiment with ultra high speed water drop photography again. I was using my Canon 1DMK3 and a 90mm TS-E for a while then decided to try the Olympus E-P2 with my MZ 14-150mm and a Canon 500D +2 Diopter closeup lens. The basic setup is using a Time machine with a water drop kit. I hope that you enjoy seeing what this camera is capable of doing! I am so happy with this setup that I think that I might buy the Panasonic 45mm f/2.8 macro lens!

The colors are dorm drops of food coloring in the water. The dripped above is red. I will post a picture of the setup later today. Do a google search on water drop photography in the mean time. The time machine is a computerized camera timer system that allows dozens of specialized high speed shots like bullets, birds and balloons bursting. It has about a dozen programmable timers. It will trigger the camera, flashes or other timers!

OK, Here is an image of me getting focus. I set the 1/2" bold directly in the water drop path then focus on the threads at the height of the umbrella. It is pretty straight forward. The setup uses 3 high speed canon flashes set at 1/64 power which gives about a 1/24000s pulse which is enough to stop the action.

You can ONLY do this (in the OLY line) with the E-P1 or E-P2 cameras because they are the only ones that have a remote shutter cord hookup. The E-PL1 doesnot and I have that camera converted to Full Spectrum Infrared.

The timer connects directly to the flashes then to the camera and Drop Kit.
I push a button which releases a drop, starts 2 timers (flash and Camera). Timer 1 opens the shutter, Timer 2 fires the flashes. The key is to adjust the timers, water color, drop size flash delay and so on to get unusual images. It takes about 20 drops to setup the timers.

The E-P2 works quite well. The 14-150 is very sharp (set at about 100mm) with the Canon 500D closeup filter.

I actually have an Ipad application called talking bird for my grandson to play with. I didnt know it but it has a button that if you push hits the bird with lightning and he explodes. Also if you make the bird sing too much someone shoots him from off screen and he also explodes. You never know what you are going to get!

No for birds, I have IR sensors that detect them flying into the scene and fires the camera. I have not used this function.

That's waaaay cool Mark and I greatly applaud you. But that sounds waaaay too much like work to me. I'm sure I'll never do it, so I'm glad you're willing to!

I think the most labor intensive photographic setup I ever did was to tie a flashlight to the end of a string and hang it from the ceiling of a dark room, start the flashlight swinging, and then open a time exposure on my SLR with it lying on the floor, pointing up at the swinging light. It tracked the light around and created some pretty cool paths of light. I probably did about ten shots that way and won some sort of high school photo contest with the best of the ten. Since then, I don't think I've ever done more than frame the shot, adjust the exposure, and press the button. I don't even remember the last time I used a tripod or cable/electronic release, let alone go through anything as complex as what you're doing.

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